How to Analyze & Manage Viewer Sentiment for Online Video Marketing

Have you ever posted new video content and received an immediate reaction from your audience? Whether it was positive or negative, you probably measured this reaction through comments, shares, likes/dislikes, and other data.

Were you surprised by the response?

Tracking and responding to your audience’s sentiment is very important to a business’ marketing strategy. Video sentiment is the general consensus or feeling a viewer has towards the video or its company and products.

Sentiment is often viewed as a subjective means of research and is usually classified in three categories: positive, negative, or neutral.

Think back to your recently posted marketing video. If someone leaves a comment that reads, “I love this!”, the sentiment analysts can assume the person feels positively about your product. You might even have the opportunity to ask that viewer about what they like the most so that you can build on those points in the future.

How to Track & Analyze Video Sentiment

Video sentiment can be measured by the number of likes/dislikes on the video, content of comments if available, number of backlinks, and feedback via other channels online or offline.

Commenting sentiment is difficult to analyze since comments frequently aren’t always clear about someone’s sentiment toward the content. Oftentimes, the commenter is responding to another commenter, posting a question, or responding to other outside factors and not your content at all.

If you want a less subjective view of your audience’s video sentiment, creating a poll with a set list of questions and answers can provide clearer feedback for the content owner. For example, consider polling your audience on a specific set of questions around your new product. Be specific in your polling questions based on the specific sentiments you’re seeking to discover from your audience.

Did they view the product in a positive light?

What did they like the most about it?

Sentiment Value in Marketing

Analyzing video sentiment in your marketing video content can have a significant impact on how you position your company and products to your target market. Sentiment allows the company to adjust messaging and positioning based on the feedback. Without understanding if your audience is happy, upset, or indifferent about your company, you are missing an opportunity to gather valuable information from your target audience.

For example, perhaps your marketing department is promoting your product with a new celebrity spokesperson. You’ve already invested a lot of money in this particular marketing plan. But once you post your content and start promoting it, your audience is responding negatively to your spokesperson. Without analyzing your video sentiment, you will continue to push out content that isn’t resonating with your target audience and will likely hurt your product and brand.

The best thing about sentiment analysis is that other groups within your business can use the research. Sentiment can impact sales and marketing, as well as customer support and future product development.

How to Manage Positive & Negative Video Sentiment

While analyzing sentiment is important, don’t forget to respond and adapt.

In 2011, Groupon created a Super Bowl ad meant to poke fun at themselves but quickly garnered more dislikes than likes on YouTube.

The ad — meant to show how a Groupon deal attracted hundreds of people to a restaurant — unintentionally downplayed the crisis in Tibet. The ad offended many people and created a negative sentiment, so Groupon pulled the ads and issued an apology.

What should you do if sentiment is overly negative? It’s usually best to pull the video(s) or issue a statement like Groupon clarifying the content’s intent. As you continue to track your video sentiment, it will become easier for you to know what topics to avoid and which to further build upon.

But let’s say your video sentiment is overly positive. This gives the content creators an opportunity to engage viewers and develop stronger content or products around this response.

If sentiment is neutral, try to understand whether it’s due to your video’s content or the topic itself. It is important to understand the basis for your audience’s sentiment.

Is the content uninteresting?

Is it hard to understand or uses too much jargon for your audience?

Is the audience neutral to the product that you are promoting?

Challenges

Tracking your audience sentiment can be difficult at times, particularly when the conversation is occurring in multiple places. When videos are embedded on other websites and viewers start a conversation about that video on a third party site, it causes comment fragmentation, meaning content creators are unaware of all comments and the associated sentiment.

For example, you post and promote your marketing video on YouTube. If there are strong positive or negative sentiments toward the product, it will likely be shared via many channels. The video could be embedded on personal blogs, posted on Facebook walls and groups, or perhaps picked up by a mainstream media channel. Each venue will have it’s own commenting system and social sharing options. The video owner will not be able to find and view those comments posted outside of YouTube.

Once you are able to analyze and get a general sense of your audience’s sentiment to your company or product, you are on the road to improving your company’s brand and position in the marketplace.

How do you use video sentiment in your marketing analysis?

Have Something to Say? We're listening!

Want to chime in on this article? Share your thoughts with us on Facebook or Twitter.

Jeff Fissel is the co-founder and Vice President of Solutions at KZO Innovations, a video software company that provides an on-demand video platform for small to large enterprises and government customers. Connect with Jeff and KZO Innovations on Twitter:Follow @KZOInnovations

NOTE: Opinions expressed in this article are those of the contributing author and not necessarily that of TubularInsights.com